Month: December 2010

I did this purely for the fun of it, and am aware there are many ways to accomplish the same thing. I was playing Counter Strike Source (you should buy it and play with me, name “swharden”) and my fingers are really cold from the winter weather, and wondered if I could have a button help with the rapid firing of pistols. I mentioned it on the microphone, and one of the players (“{Ẋpli¢it} shadow”) said I should go for it. Because it was a fun little project, I documented it so I could share it. Check out the cool photos and video!

There’s a summary of the project in video form. Some details of the project are below…

Here you can see the original circuit board in the mouse. The microchip on the bottom right of the image seems to do the data processing, so I investigated it a bit and found the pin that the left-click button goes to.

Here’s the underside. It helped me identify good locations to grab +5V and GND solder points.

This is the microcontroller I decided to use for the project. It’s an ATTiny25, $1.33 USD (10+ quantity from Mouser), and has a built in 8MHz oscillator (which can run at 1MHz thanks to the DIV/8 clock prescaler.

I slap the chip in the homebrew development board (a glorified AVR-ISP mkII) and it’s ready for programming. Code and schematics are at the bottom.

After programming, I glued the microchip upside-down in the mouse case and soldered wires directly to the pins. I used small (about 28AWG) magnet wire because it’s a lot easier than stripping wires. Just heat the tip with a soldering iron, the coating melts away, and you can stick it wherever you need to with a dab of solder. Not too many people use this method, but I recommend you try it at least once! It can be very useful at times, and is about as cheap as you can get. (eBay has good prices)

BIG PROBLEM! It didn’t work *AT ALL*. Why? Didn’t know… I checked the o-scope and saw everything seemed to be working fine. It turns out that 50 clicks per second was too fast to register, and when I reduced the speed to 25 clicks per second it worked fine. Unfortunately I had to add extra wires to allow myself to program the chip while it was in the mouse – a major pain that complicated the project more than I wished!

Here’s a good view of the transistor. Simply put, when the microcontroller sends power to the “base” pin of the 2n2222 transistor, the “collector” is drained through the “emitter”, and the transistor acts like a switch. It’s shorting the pin, just like would happen if you physically pressed the left click mouse button. When the mouse microchip is positive (+5V), it’s “no click”, but when it goes to ground (shorted by the click button), a click is detected. I biased the “base” pin toward ground by connecting it to GND through a high value resistor. This makes sure it doesn’t accidentally fire when it’s not supposed to.

Here you can clearly see the programmer pins I added. This lets me quickly access the chip and reprogram it if I decide to add/modify functionality.

When it’s all said and done, it’s surprisingly slick and functional. I’m using it right now to write my blog, and the button isn’t really in the way. I think it’s one of those el-cheapo buttons you get in a pack of 10 from RadioShack, but I would highly recommend eBay as RadioShack is ridiculously overpriced on components.

There’s the schematic. Grabbing 5v and GND from a usb mouse is trivial. Heck, most of the circuity/code is trivial! Now that I think about it, this represents are really great starter project for anyone interested in microcontrollers.

Use this diagram of the pin functions for reference.

Remember there’s more than one way to skin a cat! For example, if you don’t want to program a microcontroller, a 555 timer is a simple method and there are tutorials out there demonstrating how to do this. I chose a microcontroller because I can precisely control the rate of firing and the duration. If you decide to do something similar, send me photos and I’d be happy to share them on the site! I love doing tangible projects, however silly they are.

About Scott

Scott Harden lives in Gainesville, Florida and works at the University of Florida as a biological research scientist studying cellular neurophysiology. Scott has lifelong passion for computer programming and electrical engineering, and in his spare time enjoys building small electrical devices and writing cross-platform open-source software. more →